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Barytes is found in large veins in the western and middle counties, and is exported to the Northern States, to be used, among other things, in the manufacture of paints as a substitute, in part or whole, for the lead carbonate.
Building Stones, granite, marble and sandstone abound everywhere.
Half a dozen Diamonds have been found accidentally in washing gold, some of them of considerable value.
Oil Shales exist in great thickness in connection with the \ coal beds and yield a large per centage of oil.
The other minerals mentioned are of common occurrence.
Of minerological curiosities there is a larger number found in this State than in any other of the United States.
CLIMATE.
The climate of North Carolina corresponds to that of Northern Italy and Southern and western France^ being tempered on one side by the Atlantic ocean and on the other by the high peaks and table lands of the Appalachian mountains. And as the State has so great a length from east to west, as well as so considerable an elevation towards the interior (3,000 and 4,000 feet,) the range of climate is very great, from subtropical on the coast, within the influence of the Gulf Stream, to cold temperate on the tablelands of the west. The isothermal in the one case, (at Smithville, the extreme southeast,) being 60° (that of Alexandria, in Egypt,) and in the other (at Boone, the higher mountain plateau in the west,) about 51°, which is that of New York and of Paris, France; the middle region falling under the line of 60°, which is that of Nagasaki, Athens, Gibraltar, &c. The following tables of temperature, taken from the U. S. Agricultural Reports and the Smithsonian Observations as given by Blodgett, will show the range and character of the climate better than any description.